


Bump and Grinding Teeth

by nonky



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 12:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Prompt from an LJ ficathon, though I have lost the link to credit the prompter by name: "If I had to have a stripper's name it would be Equality."Spoilers: Up to the show events of approximately 3x11, though not really mentioning much beyond Ben living in Pawnee in Andy and April's house.





	Bump and Grinding Teeth

Leslie was the designated driver, and she was driving him home because Ben couldn't see things. Well, he could see - things. He was not sure the things he was seeing were really there. No pink elephants, but there was a wavy line effect on walls that his hands said were solid, and Ben was having some trouble not picturing people naked.

It left him wheeling abruptly away as people joined the group of city hall employees taking advantage of The Snake Hole's public servant happy hour specials. He wasn't sure if that was an intended effect of the drink - even though Ben only had one White Noise pushed on him by Tom, it had been strong and complimentary. Literally, it had told him he looked 'spiffy.' He had tried to start a conversation about Don Delillo and air pollution as social allegory, but the drink wasn't having it. The drink wanted to be drunk, and soon Ben was drunk, too.

He lolled in Leslie's passenger seat and thought about how her car upholstery smelled nice like her. He had found that looking out the windows while they were driving gave him an immense feeling of momentum and also nausea. His pants were very brown. He couldn't remember buying pants so brown, and yet he was wearing them, so they were obviously his pants.

“I hope these are my pants,” he said anxiously.

“They're your pants,” Leslie assured him kindly. She turned to look at him as she spoke, and smiled, Ben was sure of it. He smiled at the upholstery.

“Thanks. Thanks for the ride . . . Leslie.” He peeled off the seat far enough to test his stomach, and decided to risk letting go with one hand so he could sit tipped over to her. He couldn't see her face now, but he had a pretty nice view of lap and her arms appeared sometimes when she was driving. “I know you probably have better things to do with your night. A nice dinner with a smug jackass, who's going to put his hands on you later.”

He ended the strange, unsexy fantasy by shutting up and thinking about baseball. Why did it need to be a diamond? Why couldn't baseball be played with a minimum of sixteen bases, like his teenage build up to losing his virginity? It really didn't properly evoke the metaphor of sex at all in modern society. Like, what base was sexting? Was that third or was it first? It wasn't second, because second was under the shirt but over the bra.

Except with Dawn Gilbert back home, he thought fondly. At the time, the sudden move up a whole base was a pretty steep learning curve, but Dawn's mother was a hippie. Bras were strictly an as-needed garment, and bless Dawn Gilbert for doing great without it.

“I, uh, I'm not seeing anyone right now,” she said, pausing. This time she was not smiling and he knew he needed to apologize. “I'm really focused on the parks department, and I have some ideas about a run for city council when the time is right.”

He perked up, because they could talk politics. Well, Ben didn't think he could pronounce politics, but he could talk around the hard words. Con-stitch-you-N-see. Fi-douche-E-airy sss-pen-DING!

Oh, god, no talking politics. He needed her to think he was remotely intelligent later, when she was proposing a sprawling 500 square foot green space where the city really needed more parking to stimulate business development.

“Tha's good,” Ben told her. He felt he should throw some more enthusiasm at her and scrubbed his knuckles along her sleeve when it came into view. “I'll vote for you, s'long as you're fis- phy-sick-ally – no, fis-cal-lee -” He was never going to manage all the syllables of 'responsible.' He settled. “-smarty pants.”

Leslie spoke drunk better than he'd hoped, because she gave his wandering hand a pat and got it back in his side of the car before it landed down in her lap. “Thanks, Ben. I fully intend to be a selfless voice for the will of the excellent people of Pawnee.”

A sudden low hit him and he slumped into the seat with a sigh. “Tha's good. I wanted to be that. I was gonna be that. Fuckin' Ice Town.”

He usually didn't mention his impeachment if he could avoid it, but Leslie knew. She even seemed to sympathize with the insanely overblown ideology that had pushed the project months beyond pure insanity. He'd wanted to build something as large as the love he felt for the town that had elected him; but infinity was expensive and expressing his emotions was not his best trait.

The awkwardness in the air lingered, and his stomach was starting to take on the queasy flopping of his tired neck. Ben swallowed and told himself not to puke on Leslie, then he began having auditory hallucinations to go with all the stuff he thought he might be seeing.

“If I had to have a stripper's name it would be Equality.”

Her voice had said it, but he must have imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was because he'd seen a little gap in her buttons with his head propped to nearly look at her. Maybe this was just his level of drunk – horny in all directions and certainly not capable of doing anything about it.

“What?” Ben knew he sounded deranged and turned on. He was too drunk to decide which should be lamented more. Monday was going to be a really hard day for eye contact.

“My mom went through a radical sexuality phase, and if I'd been born a few years earlier, she was going to name me Bliss Equality Knope,” Leslie said seriously.

He levered carefully, worming around in the seat until he was mostly upright and looking at her. “Really?!”

“Well, my dad wasn't going to let her, but yeah.” They both seemed a little lost for words, then she brightened. “Equality is a really amazing stripper name though! I know if I'd ended up a stripper, I'd definitely want to be Equality.”

Bizarrely, Ben wanted her to be Equality, too. He admired strong, professional, wildly strategising Leslie, but he knew what she looked like. He couldn't form an actual image of her working the pole, but that crazy energy she put into parks projects carried over to dancing. She and Ann certainly had no qualms fake grinding on each other with a large audience. Whenever he saw her outside a meeting or lunch, Leslie was walking quickly. She had to have really strong thighs for the pole.

Horrified, Ben smacked his own face and made sure it hurt. He couldn't quite see once his chin came to a stop, and he wondered if he'd lost his glasses because his vision was blurred.

“You don't wear glasses,” Leslie told him. “And you're saying things out loud that I think you're probably meaning just to say to yourself.”

“Tha's entirely poss-uh-bull,” Ben agreed. “Uh, sorry.”

“No, you're right,” she said brightly. “If I was a stripper, I'd probably do great on the pole. I'm not really tall and busty, but I'm way stronger than average.”

This was not helping his mental pictures fade quietly away as a drunken musing he could laugh about tomorrow. Ben felt the need to reassure her – politely- that he would be happy to see her jiggling and upside down.

“You have great knees,” he said hurriedly. “Really good knees.”

“Aw, thanks. I do like my knees,” she told him. “And if I was a stripper, I'm sure you'd be my favourite customer.”

She was being nice, and maybe a tiny bit flirty at a moment when it obviously couldn't be taken seriously. Obviously, Ben should have chuckled and let the moment ride out like the pleasant silliness it was. Obviously.

What he did was he lunged at her, luckily missing her mouth by a big miscalculation and planting his face in her armpit. She smelled really nice and fresh for the end of a long day at work and a longer evening at The Snakehole Lounge.

It was equally lucky the were just reaching April and Andy's house at the time, so Leslie calmly pulled over and parked. She helped Ben up to a sitting position, and he felt himself curling up like a literal ball of shame.

“Up-sy daisy! Hey, Ben, I can't carry you, Ben. You're going to have to walk at least a little bit,” Leslie told him. “You didn't hurt your face, did you?”

There was a faint ache on the bridge of his nose from a metal piece of her bra, but he would never admit an injury from accidentally making out with her underam. Ben shook his head and began to babble in half-apologetic, half-praiseful words.

“I really enjoyed – sorry about the- hey, this is a really smooth ride . . . I, send me your dry cleaning bill,” he garbled.

“No problem, Ben,” she smiled.

He managed his own seat belt, but leaned on her heavily as they walked up to his door. Leslie leaned him on a potted plant someone must have given his landlord and landlady, because April didn't do plants, and Andy was flummoxed by the notion of adding water to anything except instant meals. Ben petted the leaves and told himself he would buy it some plant food when he was near the florist.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?”

He and the plant should hang out more. It was so much quieter than Andy and it didn't specialize in confrontational eye contact like April. In the spring, or maybe not until summer, Ben was definitely, definitely going to spend more time with the plant. He would think of a good name for it. Maybe he could play it some classical music.

Leslie came in close, her hands getting around his waist and kind of hugging him up to her front. He really tried not to look, but his neck seemed rubbery and prone to falling cleavage-ward.

“Poor Ben,” she said. “If it makes you feel any better, if I was a stripper and you were my favourite customer, I'm pretty sure you'd get a few free shows because you're so sweet.”

On the one hand, he didn't really think of himself as sweet. He'd been the hatchet man too long to believe it. On the other hand, she smelled really nice, and she was hugging him. Ben hauled his arms up over her shoulders and wrapped her in against his chest, falling back to the wall and pinning some of the plant.

“Tha's really nice of you,” he said huskily. “If I was a stripper, I'd be so completely awful I promise I'd never dance for you, even for free.”

She let out a big laugh and he smiled at her ear. With her bright hair curled around it, it looked like a funny, pink swirly angel. Ben really hoped he was not narrating his thoughts out loud anymore.

“Oh my god, you would suck.”

“I said that,” he protested. “But I'd be trying to work my way through college to be a city hall employee. I'd have heart.”

She pulled back with a warm, happy noise. “I like your heart, Ben Wyatt. I like to think I'm the one who helped you dig it out from all that crap and start using it again.”

That was pretty much the truth, and he acknowledged it as she helped him drag his drunk ass as far as the sofa. She told him to drink water, waved goodbye, and looked back over her shoulder with a saucy wiggle as she went out the door.

Ben decided he was definitely just seeing . . . things. Then he wondered what base doing a face plant into a girl's armpit was, closed his eyes and smiled to the ceiling.


End file.
